What Will You Trust? Series

What Will You Trust?

John 4:43-54

Mark Roder had a problem. Squirrels were eating all the bird seed in his bird feeder. Mark is a YouTuber and an engineer. So he built an obstacle course for the squirrels in his backyard and he made a YouTube video about it.

He built many obstacles. One obstacle was a brick wall with some bricks sticking out for the squirrels to stand on. That way they could jump from one protruding brick to another. It didn't take long for the squirrels to figure out how to do this one. They were resting on the protruding bricks and going from one brick to another through the obstacle. They trusted those protruding bricks. But then Mark turned the bricks on. You see, he had connected a motor to the bricks that pulled random bricks in. If a squirrel was standing on the brick he had nowhere to go and he fell to the ground.

When the squirrels realized this, they no longer trusted the protruding bricks. They treated the bricks as hot bricks and quickly jumped from one to the other. Even when the protruding bricks were turned off and no longer moved in, the squirrels still did not trust them. They jumped in a panicky manner, as if they were afraid of the bricks. It was comical to watch. The squirrels did not know what they could trust and what they couldn't trust.

What about us? What can we trust? What should we trust? Today's sermon is entitled, What will you trust? The story in today's passage is about a certain royal official whose son was sick. What would he trust? This story gives four possibilities.

1. Strangers

John 4:43 After the two days he left for Galilee.

John 4:44 (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.)

Why is this stated? This verse seems out of place. Did something happen here that we don’t know about?

Is this the time that Jesus was kicked out of His hometown, Nazareth? Is this why this is stated? Or did Jesus go to Cana which probably was near Nazareth, but did not go to Nazareth, His hometown? Is that why this is stated? We don't know. It doesn’t say.

It just states this principle. A prophet, a preacher, has no honor in his own country, in his hometown. People would rather have a stranger preach to them than someone they grew up with. The people of Nazareth refused to trust Jesus because they knew Him. If Jesus had been a stranger, they would have trusted Him.

This principle is true today. I have seen churches bring new staff in from across the country, people they really did not know, and ignore better qualified applicants who lived in their own town, applicants that they knew.

Isn't this strange?

We do the same thing, don't we? Your best friend tells you a certain fact, but you don’t believe him. What do you do? You google it, because everything online is true. You don’t know the people who created those websites with that information, they are strangers, but you trust them.

Or your doctor tells you something, but you don't believe him because someone in an email that was forwarded to you, a stranger, said something different.

There are all kinds of things that we get from strangers. We trust them. But maybe we shouldn't be so trusting.

What will you trust? Strangers? Strangers over the people you know? No? What about miracles?

2. Miracles

John 4:45 When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, for they also had been there.

John 4:46 Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum.

John 4:47 When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.

John 4:48 “Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”

Here we have started the story. A certain royal official from Capernaum has come to Jesus in Cana, about 35 miles away. His son is sick. He is dying. He begs Jesus to heal him. What does Jesus say? “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe” or trust.

Jesus gives us our second point. Miracles. Some people are looking for miracles. If only they find a miracle, they will trust. Or will they? These verses tell how the people had seen the things that Jesus had done in Jerusalem. Did they trust? Crowds followed Jesus just to see the miracles. Did they trust Him? Where were they at the end of Jesus' life when everyone forsook Him?